September 23, 2018 / Tosh's Diary (Paris/Los Angeles)

September 23, 2018

The flight was somewhere between 10 and 11 hours long, and it was boring as hell. The service on the airline Air France was outstanding.  But there were delays at the airport, and the plane took off about an hour late. The Charles DeGaulle airport is enormous of course, but one of the interesting aspects of its architecture is the wooden ceilings.  At LAX Bradley terminal I feel we are in a series of confined spaces, but the vastness of the boarding gate in Paris is immense, and it actually becomes a vanishing point when you look in the front of you.   

As one gets to their seat, you are confronted by a lack of space, but I’m mentally prepared for that. I brought two books with me for the reading.  The main book is Alexander Trocchi’s “Cain’s Book” which I purchased in a bookstore in Paris called the Red Wheelbarrow.   Across from the Lexingburg Gardens.  As far as I know, or at least on this trip, I came upon four English language bookstores. All were good.  Any John Calder publication is a good book.  It’s the British version of Grove Press or the sister or brother of that excellent publishing house.  Calder had an extraordinary vision as a publisher.  I still haven’t finished the book, and every time I feel sleepy, I try to close my eyes to drift off to sleep.

Nevertheless, sleep is impossible for me on a plane.  My sense of travel is being at a location. I don’t actually like the physical aspect of traveling.  I hate luggage.  I really don’t like airports. I loathe going through security.  And I generally don’t enjoy the ride to or from the airport.  I love being at my destination.  But the compromise to get to that direction of the destination is a horror show for me.  I envy fictional characters like James Bond, or Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible,” where there is a subtitle that says “Berlin,” and therefore you know the main character is there in that city.  I too want to travel in such a manner where a subtitle shows up under my body, and I’m immediately at that location.  You never see Bond buying a plane ticket or waiting at the airport. Nor is he busy making sure he has a European wall plug for his laptop computer.  The one groovy thing I do have is that I rent a portable wi-fi set.  I discovered this when I went to Japan, and in that country, there is not that many ‘hot spots’ for internet use.   Carrying this small pocket-sized wi-fi is a dream.  The battery lasts for six hours, so one should turn it off when not in use. Other then that, it’s perfect. 

We got back home around 10 PM, and I drank a few glasses of wine, checked my e-mail, and tried to feel like I was back home in Los Angeles.  My brain was here, but my body thought it was still walking on Germain-des-Prés. I have a hard time with jet-lag.  Forcing the body and mind to be in one place is a problem for me.  I heard one should just drink water on the jet, but of course, I drank wine.  It’s free on international flights!  Still, I don’t think I can ever beat this feeling of being displaced in time and space.  I got up early and went to work at ARTBOOK (917 E 3RD Street, Los Angeles 90013) to take images for me to write about - and then I walked around Downtown Los Angeles.  It still feels like I was in Paris.  Even though I was walking down Spring Street, I felt the next corner will be rue Oberkampf in the 11th arrondissement.  Which by the way is named after Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, an 18th-century German-born French industrialist. He invented the first machine for printing wallpaper.  

Lun*na and I went to the Tony Berlant opening at the Kohn Gallery (North Highland Avenue, Los Angeles 90038) and the dinner afterward at Michael and Caroline’s home for the artist.  The show is pretty great.  Tony’s work is basically collaged with images printed on metal, or tin, and put together by steel brads, which gives the art a multi-textural feel.  Some are flat pieces while others are sculptures.  Also, I really like the works that are horizontal when placed on the wall.   They stick out so one can see both sides of the artwork.  So, in a sense, they are sculptural, but flat as well.  Interesting combination. I made a note to myself to come back to the exhibition to spend more time with the art. 

 Tosh Berman

March 16, 2017 (Tosh's Diary) Los Angeles

March 16, 2017 (Tosh's Diary) Los Angeles

Night to night and from day-to-day I try to stay alerted to my surroundings.  We arrived from Tokyo a few days ago, and since then it has been a struggle for me to accept my brain is in my physical body.  We arrived at 1:00 PM, and due to the organization of Super Shuttle, we arrived at our home at 3:30 PM.  So overall, it takes one and a half hours on a bus to Tokyo to Narita airport, then three hours hanging out at the airport.  Then nine and a half hours on a plane.  Customs take around 30 minutes with the weirdest questions such as 'how much cash do you have,' with right after that, 'I spent time in Japan to see my cousin who's in the military.'   While there is a line of people waiting to be processed so they can get on with their lives to pick up their luggage.    A very long day that March 14. 

I get home to face a month full of mail.  Bills as well as invitations that are way past their acceptance.  The first thing I noticed when we walked into our house is the smell of someone not being there, except the odor of dust and no air, due that the windows were locked up.   I had to make a few phone calls, and then I looked at the ceiling for a few hours from our couch in the living room.   

The weather is warm, and we just came from a climate that's wet and cold.  Our clothing still expressed that part of the world, where in fact we should be wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  The heat made me feel not good, but out-of-existence.   I couldn't relate to the sweat that was building up on my chest and forehead.  I still have the traces of a cold that I caught in Tokyo, I think due to the cold rooms that I came upon from the cold outside to slightly warmer places.   Also, I kept on moving consistently for a month without rest or reflection.  There were so many things to see and do.  I didn't use the word 'no,' while I was in Japan.  

I can't sleep.  My body is fully active.  My brain is dead.  I maybe dead.  Just feel like the body is operating without a thought in my head.   Today's date or day is just a theory, and I'm aware of the deadlines that are in place in front of me.  I'm feeling sad, and I don't have the foggiest idea why.  My emotions are up front, and logic is somewhere buried deeply into a locked room.   I walked around the house in pitch darkness.  I go to bed, but my brain is in the daylight.   I look up the ceiling, and I can't make out the cracks which I think of the Nile River.  I used to follow it from one end to the other  - and by the time I reached there, I'm asleep.  This is not the case tonight.

I read the newspaper websites in the middle of the night, and I know life is going on, but I feel so not part of it.  Dick Clark, one-time America's oldest teenager, commented that "Jet lag is for amateurs."   I only wanted to be in that category, because I loathe professionalism that puts me down into a particular class or position.   I try to remind myself that I'm on a higher plane, but the truth is, I'm always crashing in the same car.   What do I know about knowing?  I'm going round and round in my house, and I only have these walls to keep me grounded.   When I do sleep, it's at 6 in the morning.  It's not sleeping; it's more like being in a coma.